


flicker from view

by uppityminx



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Brothers, Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Love, Moving On, Other, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:56:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9085576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uppityminx/pseuds/uppityminx
Summary: He’s biologically older and arguably wiser than he was then - but even the very best of us, he realizes, as Tina shivers against an absent breeze, are still ghost-ridden. [Newt Scamander deals with an overstayed life and the prospect of a beginning; companion piece to ‘flightless bird.’]





	

**Author's Note:**

> It isn’t essential to read ‘flightless bird’ before this, but it definitely helps to fill in gaps and provide some context that I don’t delve into here. Hope you enjoy!

Newt can’t quite determine if Tina is happy to see him.

“I’d like that - very much,” she’d said to him ten months earlier, and that reassurance had been enough, along with several instances of correspondence in between. He also wasn’t in the habit of breaking promises.

So he’d shown up to her office in MACUSA and waited until she returned from her lunch break.

Tina’d been so surprised that she’d accidentally disarmed him.

But after the initial confusion, she’d greeted him with that same tentative and warm smile, bought him a pastry (the most delightful thing he’d ever seen), asked him endless questions about the book, and then invited him back to her home for dinner with her sister.

Still. It had been nearly a year, and he’s never been very good at reading people.

She’s now immersed in the book, one hand turning the pages, the other absently tapping against her cheek. There’s some sort of Muggle music - _the Duke fellow, perhaps?_ His knowledge on the subject ends there - crooning in the background and he hears Tina's quiet hums every so often. He sits across from her at the kitchen table, pretending to observe the pots and pans merrily scrubbing themselves in the sink.

“Your hair is different,” he says suddenly, and she looks up with a start. He clears his throat, an uncomfortable heat rising up his neck. “Longer,” he clarifies, with a strangled sort of smile.

Tina automatically reaches up to touch her hair, which now just brushes her shoulders. “Oh, yeah,” she agrees, looking torn between confusion and shyness. “I, uh, keep forgetting to cut it.”

“Curlier, too, p-perhaps,” he hears himself add.

“Mhm.” There’s now a small smile on her face.

A breath of silence, a measure of music - then Tina adds quickly, almost as an afterthought, “Your hair is different, too. Shorter.”

He too, instantly reaches up to feel the back of his head, as if he’d forgotten. “Yes, well - again, my father needed his say.”

_New York?_ His father had also questioned, with his usual regal, furrowed brow. _What in the name of Merlin are you going to New York for?_

_Er, business, sir,_ he’d said.

_Didn’t think you had any ‘business’ going on._

Tina’s voice cuts through his thoughts. “I like it,” she offers softly, and a peculiar expression flits across her face before she busies herself with the book again, cheeks pink.

(she’s happy, he concludes,

at least a bit.)

 

* * *

 

Immediately after his excursion to China, he takes a quick detour in Scandinavia before heading back to the West.

Very soon after, he receives word from Theseus - who, much to Newt’s dismay, found his location on account of his Ministry connections - with the yearly request that his younger brother eat a meal and spend a day with his family at the estate.

_I’ll admit that I haven’t read your impressive book quite yet, however you must recognize that my natural tendency to avoid non-essential reading certainly factors in this situation._

_I know you’re traipsing off in the woods in some ‘undisclosed locale’ (you really thought I couldn’t find you?) but do send me a response as soon as you possibly can._

_Regards,_ _  
_ _Theseus_

The kneazle had ripped through the last of his parchment paper, so he responds on a large leaf:

_My schedule will be quite hectic in the upcoming months. I’m afraid I’ll have to get back to you at a later time on the matter._

_Read the book. It’s very good._

_Newt_  
  
\--  
  
October 1908  
  
“You have a brother, don’t you?” she asks, sprawled out on the grass behind the greenhouses.

_“Yes. Theseus.” He passes her the bowtruckle. “But look at her, Leta, isn’t she lovely?”_

_She reaches out eagerly, giggling as the tiny creature scuttles up and down her arm. “Where do you even find these?”_

_“My father took me hunting during the summer. I wasn’t very interested in shooting or gaming, so I went exploring instead. Came across Magda here.”_

_“She’s amazing,” Leta breathes, and as her bright gaze turns from the bowtruckle to him, Newt feels a thrill shudder through him._

_He’s being_ seen.

_“But your brother, what’s he like?”_

_Newt’s brief window of happiness unceremoniously shutters. “Does it matter?” he mutters._

_Leta shrugs easily, as the bowtruckle jumps from her shoulder to head. “Just curious.”_

_Newt sighs, watching Magda finally settle at the crown of his companion’s head. “He’s just started his first year of Auror training. He’s not particularly book smart, I s’pose, but he studied enough to get the O.W.Ls he needed. And he was the best duelist of his year.”_

_“What’s he like to_ you _, though?”_

_“He’s always been rather bemused by me,” Newt replies. “He’s the golden boy of the family. Never put a foot wrong in my father’s eyes. He thinks he’ll be in charge of the entire army of Aurors someday.”_

_The familiar sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach comes to life, ignited with the sound of his father’s heavy sigh._ Oh Newt, what the hell will the world do with you?

_He feels Leta firmly place a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll build our own army,” she states. “I’ll be the General, and you’ll be my Captain.”_

_As he looks into her dark, sharp eyes, filled with a fierce determination, he finds himself sitting a little straighter, something within him growing a little stronger. He grins at her, offering a mock salute._

_“At your service, General Lestrange.”_  
  
\--  
  
Later that day, he finds a single bowtruckle hanging limply from a birch tree in the forest. Separated from her branch in a recent storm, she lets out a sad chitter as he gently lays her in the palm of his hand.

Newt keeps her in his pocket throughout the next few days with frequent inspections. Pickett is surprisingly understanding.

Within a week, she’s bright and chatty as ever, comfortable with his other bowtruckles and fervently exploring every inch of his case.

_She’s a fighter_ , Newt thinks admiringly, and wonders idly what to call her.

_I think your General might deserve some recognition,_ a drifting voice teases him, and he wants to push it away as much as he wants it to linger.

- _strong voice and sunned complexion and sharp eyes that see him_ -

A note smelling of cinnamon and pencil shavings drops in lap later that day and he manages to brush off his ghost as he reads it.

(after swimming in scribbled words of tense trackings and sisterly protectiveness and weary determination, Newt later decides that the task of naming his fighter should be in the hands of a similar soul.)

 

* * *

 

“What do you mean, you ‘don’t care for this?’”

Tina glares at him, head tilted to the side and hands on her hips. He would be amused if he weren’t so miffed himself.

(besides, he’s found that he quite enjoys arguing with her.)

“I mean just that,” Newt retorts. “Zoos are a perfect example of humanity’s need to _display_ everything. To control whatever they can, whenever. Even your prized Central Park.”

“The Central Park Zoo is an institution,” Tina sniffs. “One of the first in the entire country. And the city takes fine care of the animals.”

“But look!” He dashes forward to the nearby giraffe exhibit, nearly barrelling over a young Muggle woman in the process. “ _Cages_ , Tina.”

“Education, Newt!” she counters, joining him. “Not everyone has their own private, suitcase-sized safari.”

He stares wistfully at the giraffe. “I’d take you with me, if I could,” he tells her.

“Oh, for the love of…”

The giraffe ducks her head, tongue lolling out as she leans towards Newt, making soft whining noises. “That’s a girl,” Newt murmurs.

“You’re Dr. Doolittle,” Tina says faintly.

“Actually, I’m Newt Scamander,” he replies absently, reaching out to stroke the giraffe’s nose.

The giraffe suddenly leans even closer and Newt mimics the motion, convinced she’s trying to _tell_ him something-

-she sneezes promptly in his face.

Newt blinks rapidly and Tina gapes at him for a moment before bursting into peals of laughter. “I appear to have miscalculated the situation,” Newt mumbles, perplexed.

He finds himself thrown by Tina’s mirth - he’s heard her laugh many times over by now, lilting and light and utterly self-aware, but this one is different. She’s clutching her sides and it’s louder, rougher, _freer_ -

He stares at her and feels affection, simple and warm, bloom in his chest.

(to see this unwavering and unsinkable woman laugh like a child-

-in that moment he is not a haunted man, but an enraptured one)

Her laughter dies down and she meets his gaze, still beaming. “Looks like the world’s _foremost_ magizoologist has had enough for today,” she mocks gently, grinning as she passes him a handkerchief. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

“The city’s finest, I presume,” he mutters, dabbing his face.

“Absolutely,” she agrees. “Not a finer hot dog in the area.”

 

* * *

   
December 1912  
  
_He’s observed her enough by now to classify her moods by physical appearance._

_Tongue poking out: focused._  
_Head high: angered._  
_Rigid shoulders: frightened._

_He walks into the Great Hall and upon seeing the outline of her elegant profile, his stomach flips. He is fifteen now, and self-aware enough to understand that he loves her. He doesn’t tell her because she already knows - and if she doesn’t, she wouldn’t want to._

_Her chin rests on her folded arms._

_(wretched, he determines.)_

_“You wouldn’t believe what I’ve got,” he says, sliding into the seat across from her._

_She offers him an irritated glance and subsequently buries her face in her arms._

_Unaffected, he continues, “I was going to wait until the holidays, but I figured I’d show you now.”_

_Leta lifts up her head. “Not. Interested,” she pronounces, before ducking her head down once more._

_“You’re always interested.” When she doesn’t respond, Newt pokes at her shoulder. “What is it?”_

_She murmurs something incomprehensible._

_“Your parents?”_

_She jerks up her head to glare at him, and he sees that he’s right. “Bugger off, would you?” she hisses, before turning her head away._

_This doesn’t bother him because he knows she doesn’t mean it. He waits patiently, and several seconds later, he hears a muttered, yet genuine ‘sorry.’_

_“It’s fine,” he replies easily. “Would you like to talk about it?”_

_She shakes her head._

_“Come on, General Lestrange, don’t tell me you’re going to let a little gloom stop us from the greatest adventure of our lives.”_

_She turns towards him, a glint of interest in her eye. “Stop exaggerating, you brute.”_

_“Am I?” he says mildly. “You’ll have to see for yourself.”_

_“I don’t believe you for a second, Scamander.” But all the same, she heaves herself up from her seat and leaps over the table, much to a nearby Prefect’s disapproval. She grabs him by the sleeve and starts pulling him through the hall, glancing back to grin at him._

_(sudden energy: denial.)_

_“I don’t think anyone could stop us but our own selves.”_  
  
\--  
  
He knows Tina well enough by now to be able to classify at least a few of her physical tendencies.

Wringing and/or clasped hands: nerves.  
Pinched brows: concentration.  
Eyes crinkled at the corners: delight.

This one - fiddling with the locket round her neck - he hasn’t quite figured out yet.

He has some business to sort out at MACUSA following a quick, but taxing jaunt to Canada regarding the werewolf situation. They’re sitting at a cafe he favors - if he’ll admit to the States dominating his native country in anything, it’s sandwiches; the _sheer variety_ \- during her lunch break. The lone fact that she’d shown up later than he had - shocking due to her infallible promptness and his inherent lateness - was telling enough, but Tina’d been utterly distracted for the entirety of the fifteen minutes she’d been there.

“You wanted to let me know that you had an update on the registry?” he prods, glancing at her left hand, which was twisting the chain of her locket.

The woman in question was gazing out the window, eyes unfocused.

“Er, Tina?” When she still doesn’t respond, he reaches across the table and awkwardly taps her free hand, which is dangerously close to landing in her usual side dish of pickles.

“Wha-?” her head snaps back towards him, confusion evident in her eyes. “Sorry, what?”

“The registry.”

“Oh - yeah.” She appears to try to gather herself, checks her empty lap as if expecting something, only to look up in frustration. “Oh, for crying out loud - I had these notes and everything, all organized, but I must’ve left them in the office -”

“It’s fine-”

“I’m a real moron-”

“Well, you’re certainly not-”

“I’ll show you later today, I promi-”

“Tina, are you are quite alright?”

The inquiry stops her short. “I'm fine,” she says warily, both hands now on the locket.

“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but you seem-”

“Tired?”

“I was going to say, ‘preoccupied.’”

“Huh.”

“I realize I came here on short notice. If you want, we can pick this up at another hour.” He bites back his disappointment at the thought.

“No, no, it’s not that,” she says quickly. “It’s just that…” she trails off, looking at him uncertainly.

He takes in her slumped shoulders, her downcast and sunken eyes - _a crumpled, elegant frame and sharp eyes clouded with pain_ \- and the subsequent snap of recognition lends him to believe that perhaps, humanity does share a common language.

“Your parents?”

Her eyes widen. “How did you-” she cuts herself off, shaking her head. “Doesn’t matter.” She exhales slowly through her nose, and glances back up at him. She tilts her head, appearing to consider him for another moment, before reaching behind her neck.

She unlatches her necklace, flips open the locket, and points it toward him.

Inside are matching portraits of a handsome couple in a sepia tone. They mainly offer shy smiles at the viewer, but occasionally exchange looks with one another, their smiles widening the slightest bit. Despite the battering the locket has taken, the images themselves are well-preserved. Cherished.

“They hated the city,” Tina tells him, half-laughing. “Raised us upstate. I can’t imagine they’d be happy that their daughters spent their entire adult lives here.”

“I believe they’d be over the moon to see who their daughters became,” he replies, unable to take his eyes off the pictures. He hears Tina breathe in sharply. “Your mother - you look just like her. Except for-”

“-the eyes,” Tina finishes, surprisingly strong. “I have my dad’s eyes.”

“Yes.”

There is a brief silence, before Tina’s voice, quieter, fills the space again: “They’ve been dead for 20 years today. Most years, we don’t _do_ anything, really, but we’re going to the graveyard tonight.” She snaps the locket shut with a resounding _click_ , keeping it grasped in her palm.

For the first time in quite a while, Newt feels at a complete loss of words for her. “Is - is there anything I can do for you both?” he settles on, still staring at the place where the locket just lay.

She hesitates, so briefly that he wonders if he imagines it - but then she goes on to say a sincere “thank you.”

“But we’ll be fine. We always are.”

_Unwavering, unsinkable_ , his mind echoes, grief and admiration in equal parts as he watches her thumb caress the wearied piece of her past.

Later that afternoon, he leaves a large bundle of sweet-smelling lilacs on her desk. He has no clue as to whether they’re appropriate for gravestones, but Tina likes them, he recalls.

(he also makes a note of this new classification;

her locket: _resilience_.)

 

* * *

 

He’s been in the city for more than a week now, and he becomes acutely aware of how _stifling_ it feels - the endless skyscrapers, the unnatural smells, the artificiality.

(the main thing keeping him here: an offer that he would stay for a few more days, and he didn’t want to disappoint anyone-

-but he may perish if he eats another hot dog)

Tina must notice, for she offers to take him to the shore that Sunday. They invite Queenie to come as well, but she simply grins, claiming that the sea air is bad for her lungs. Tina rolls her eyes.

She apparates them to a tiny, but well-loved coast just south of the city - from the moment Newt sees the water, he feels as if he can properly breathe again. They amble down to the shore.

At Tina’s request, he goes and buys them a basket of fish and chips from one of the waterfront vendors.

“I just want you to feel at home,” she’d said innocently, and he couldn’t decide whether she was teasing him or not.

When he returns, she’s moved closer to the water, feet just out of reach of the lapping waves. Wrapped in a wool cardigan as she faces the seaside chill, she almost looks English - the hard press of her mouth, distinctly American, gives her away.

Something in chest expands (or constricts, he can’t quite tell) and he joins her.

“How is it?” she asks, smiling up at him.

“Quite good,” he admits, settling down to her right. “Nearly as good as home. I’m afraid I might have to keep it all.”

She frowns. “Oh, come on.”

He offers her a bright smile, enjoying the disgruntled expression on her face immensely. “My deepest apologies.”

“How about a little trade, then?” she offers. Furrowing her brow in concentration, she digs around in the sand and pulls out something with a flourish. She grabs his wrist and deposits it into his palm.

It’s a plain white shell, rough on the outside and bearing a smooth, pearl-pink inside.

Newt turns it over between his practiced fingers, considering. “Not one of the rarer specimens I’ve come across in my travels,” he comments mildly. He is about to divulge further when he looks up and sees her expression - biting her lower lip in restrained amusement, eyes dancing.

He dumbly hands it over.

Smirking, she begins triumphantly wolfing down chips, two at a time.

“Shameless,” he mutters, hardly able to believe himself. He hears a snort of her muffled laughter.

They sit in warm silence for a few moments as Tina polishes it off (she offers him another handful, but he’d rather see her smug happiness). Newt observes the others populating the landscape - an elderly couple coasting along the edge of the water, a trio of siblings splashing a little further out, a canine ardently rushing to join them.

He hears Tina sigh, wipe salt off her mouth with the back of her hand.

“When we were teens,” she murmurs contentedly, now staring out across the waves. “We wanted to go to the sea during the summer break. We always used to see these pictures of girls our age lying on the beach with parasols and ice cream, you know? So one day, we hitchhiked for half a day to _this_ coast.” A wry laugh escapes her. “It was raining, cold and we didn’t even know how to swim, but one woman took pity on us and gave us free soup and bread. And then we went to the shore and took about a hundred of those shells home with us. Best vacation we’d ever had.”

Her smile shifts in a twitch - fondness to bitterness.

“Things like that seem different when you’re younger, don’t they?” he says softly, and how he wished it hadn’t meant what it did -

(but Leta always knew how to make her mark.)

Tina turns her gaze to him, sadness and understanding beyond comprehension in her dark eyes. He feels her long, cold fingers wrap themselves securely around his own, and her body lean almost imperceptibly closer. “I have ghosts, too, you know,” she murmurs, only warm puffs of air in the shrinking space between them. “But I’d be happy to share yours, even for just a moment.”

His heart stutters, overwhelmed and yearning-

_You need a Giver_ , Queenie’d told him-

(and she is so, so close now)

_I don’t think anyone could stop us but our own selves-_

He is jerked horribly out of his reverie (out of her space), and is pulling away before his mind can even consider it. Tina starts too, her gaze immediately darting to ground, hands now gripping the locket round her neck as if he’d burned them.

He swallows, regret pulsing through his veins. “Thank you, Tina.”

(he doesn’t think he could share her if he tried)

Tina - unwavering, unsinkable - offers him a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

_We’ll build our own army-_

He’s biologically older and arguably wiser than he was then - _but even the very best of us_ , he realizes, as Tina shivers against an absent breeze, _are still ghost-ridden_.

He tucks the shell away in his jacket pocket, and leaves for the Amazon the day after the next.

 

* * *

 

_“Please, sir - it was me, not her.”_

He returns to the Amazon after Tina’s birthday and a week later, an envelope embossed with Theseus’ steady print is passed to him via the nearest village.

_“Yes, she was there. But it was my doing, not hers.”_

This time, the envelope contains a one-sentence letter: _I thought you should know._

_The headmaster is infuriated, his father cold, his mother distraught._

And a newspaper clipping.

_As the frenzied group starts to peter out, Professor Dumbledore pulls him aside and puts one sober hand on his shoulder, peering down at him. “Mr. Scamander - are you quite certain?”_

He grips the days-old paper so tightly that his fingers are stained black with ink.

_It is the only thing of which he has ever been certain. “Yes, sir.”_

Magical creature hybrids traded amongst Dark circles in Western Europe, it says.

_When he goes back to his dormitory to gather his things, she is pacing furiously - the starting descent of a climaxed anger, built over half a year. “How dare they?” she cries. Over and over and over._

These creatures have been a powerful aid in Grindelwald’s crusade against Muggles and their wizarding allies.

_She suddenly halts and grabs the front of his robes, shaking him. “How dare_ you _?”_

Led by the deliberate work of an unofficial expert in the field of magical creatures - born of the Dark roots which her surname so haughtily bears.

_He lets her rattle him until she pushes him away, her sharp eyes glaring with tears. “How dare you let them stop us.”_

Perhaps it was inevitable, the clipping concludes,

that Leta Lestrange’s path could only lead to the darkness that she was so inherently tied to.

_He stares at her - livid and agonized and still unfathomably stunning - and his mind is heavy and clear, all at once._

_(he loves her;_

_he does not recognize her)_

_“Leta, the only ones who stopped us were our own selves.”_

He burns Theseus’ letter to a heap of ash, a phoenix never to be reborn.

Then he did as he did fifteen years ago, back at his far-too-large room in the English countryside, surrounded by textbooks he never opened and clutching a photograph he needed and couldn’t stand to look at.

He howls.

 

* * *

 

There’s only one place his feet will take him.

Tina opens the door, eyes widening at the sight of him. “I thought you wouldn’t be back here for a few more weeks,” she says with a radiant smile - Fickle peeking out of her jacket pocket -  and for one agonizing breath, it feels as if she’s welcoming him _home_.

And then he passes her the newspaper and she doesn’t say anything at all.

_Human nature_ , is what Queenie calls it later that night.

(it reminds him why he does what he does.)

He seems to be devoid of nearly all words, but not so much as Tina - she is steady and gentle and _there_ , but silent. When his mind clears enough to see that - despite Queenie’s protests - he’s overstayed his welcome, she walks with him to the door.

He steps into the hallway, waits for his usual goodbye to slip between his teeth, but all he can do is fixate his bleary stare on the pocket of her collared shirt. A patch of dish soap, a blemish on the expanse of blue cotton, mocks him.

“Well… travel safely.” The quiet words cause his head to snap up - her eyes are trained on the floor, but her shrunken frame, guarded and severed from his space, and trembling hands are enough for him to see.

_our own selves -_

Tina Goldstein has _wavered_ and _sunk_ , and it’s by his own selfish hand.

(and as he finally staggers away from her, he realizes that this alone is more painful than anything else he’d endured that night.)

 

* * *

 

He returns to his roots.

He returns because his mother asks him to, his father most likely has a bone to pick with him, and because he hasn’t anywhere else to go. He also became an uncle, to a tiny pink creature, the golden daughter of his golden brother - they’ve named her Adelaide.

It’s all very _Scamander_.

So he stays there, because he needed time, and what was supposed to be a few weeks becomes three months. He wakes, eats breakfast, goes into his case, eats lunch (or doesn’t), tends to the hippogriffs, eats supper with his family (or doesn’t), sleeps, and repeats.

Once more, ninety times.

_Time_ , it’s what he needed anyway. Time, and space.

_From what?_ His ghost asks him, impatient and amused.

He doesn’t know.

(he must check the owl post before he turns in for the night.)

“How long have you been out here?” Theseus’ voice comes from behind him, slightly exasperated but unsurprised.

“I’ve no idea,” Newt responds honestly, keeping his eyes focused on Balthazar’s wing, crumpled and limp. “I just couldn’t bear to leave him like this for the night. He’d been doing so well.”

The aforementioned creature lets out a high-pitched squawk of distress, a mark of its newborn status. Newt gently runs his hand over his head, offering him soothing words of nonsense.

He can’t leave him like this.

“Why don’t you come in, just for dinner?” Theseus’ tone is placating. “Just let mum see your face today.”

“Maybe later,” he responds absently.

“Newt-”

“I can’t leave him like this!” Newt snaps as he turns towards his brother - Balthazar stumbles back slightly with a _caw_ of surprise.

A silence falls between them, Newt turning back to the young creature with more words of comfort, his pulse pounding ferociously. _I can’t let him be left_ , he thinks, an old ache returning to his chest.

_how dare you let them-_

Theseus steps forward again, this time forcing himself within Newt’s space. “Newt, what are you doing here?” he asks, frustration edging his words. “It’s been nearly three months. You say you came to visit mum and meet your niece, but you’ve hardly done either of those things. You spend your entire day out here, or doing Merlin-knows-what down in your case. We haven’t seen you this way since-”

He breaks off suddenly, and Newt despises the look of dismayed recognition quickly spreading across his brother’s face.

“ _Merlin_ , Newt.”

“Don’t do that,” Newt mutters, standing up and giving Balthazar a final stroke.

“Don’t do what?”

“Pretend as if - as if you _know_ me.” _As if you see me._

“When I sent you the _Prophet_ article, I didn’t think it would cause such… an _upending_.”

Newt steps away from Balthazar, closing his eyes. “You don’t know anything-”

“Enough!” Theseus snaps, uncharacteristically abrupt. “You think you’re some sort of obscurity to me, Newt? A mystery I’ll never be able to solve, simply because you’re different from me?”

Newt suddenly feels a hand on his shoulder - he stiffens, but does not run. “I am your brother,” Theseus murmurs, strong and sure and all the things that Newt forgets he is. “We grew up in the same world and share a piece of it to this day, whether you like it or not.”

Sometimes, Newt reflects with a sharp pain under his breastbone, he also forgets that his brother - who perhaps, at least in some ways, will always be bemused by him - loves him.

He exhales, opening his eyes, and finally brings himself to look at his golden brother, who gazes at him with the same regal, furrowed brow as their father (the parental weariness replaced with brotherly concern.)

The words fall out before he can quite help himself.

“There’s this... girl.” Newt offers quietly, and immediately frowns in distaste - _girl_ , what a wholly inadequate word -

Theseus blinks and steps back, folding his arms. “You didn’t want to have this conversation a decade earlier?” he asks, his lips twitching as he restrains a smile.

Newt half-smiles, glancing at the ground. “It’s not who you think.”

“Well, then tell me about her.”

_How to begin? And how to end?_ “She’s… lovely,” he murmurs, feeling the familiar warmth throb and expand from one end of his body to the other. “But more than that, she’s _passionate_ , in all she does, and disarming - quite literally. Utterly frustrating, too.” He pauses, considering.

_I have ghosts, too, you know._

_But I’d be happy to share yours, even for just a moment._

“But really, she’s simply this truly - truly marvelous person. Perhaps the best I’ve ever known.”

To his own amusement, he can sense Theseus’ bewilderment. “It sounds like you might love her,” his brother states cautiously, unfolding his arms.

He doesn’t hesitate. “I know I do.”

Newt smiles reflexively, the indisputable _truth_ of his admission dousing him with blind joy.

(certainty feels different than it did at sixteen, he thinks.)

“Then what on earth’s the issue? Go on and tell her!”

(he recalls the crest of her radiant smile, crumbling and sinking with the pass of a newspaper)

“Tina Goldstein deserves far more than a detached and damaged man with a ghost on his back.”

(a battered locket and twitching fingers;

_her heart had been broken enough_ )

“Leta does factor in, then,” Theseus figures, shaking his head. “She’s been out of your life for over a decade, Newt. It’s time to move forward.”

“I’d very much like to,” Newt mumbles. “But that’s the problem, you see. Loving Leta, it’s - it’s all I’ve ever really known.”

_I’ll be the General, and you’ll be my Captain-_

A strange look crosses Theseus’ face, and he draws his brother close. “I understand,” he says softly. “She was the first person you loved - but clearly, the price of that was constant pain. Genuine love isn’t like that.”

“What’s it like, then?”

“It’s having someone carry your pain _with_ you.”

_I’d be happy to share yours-_

“And Newt?” Theseus’ voice breaks through the sudden daze clouding Newt’s mind.

“Hm?”

“Perhaps you’re a bit damaged, yes - perhaps we all are. But detached?” Theseus chuckles lightly, turning back towards the house. “I don’t think there’s another person more connected to the core of humanity than you, brother.”

 

* * *

 

It was time. Merlin, it was time.

Newt picks up the frame, Leta’s smile as familiarly enigmatic as it’d always been.

_Don’t tell me you’re going to let a little gloom stop us from the greatest adventure of our lives._

A shuddering breath leaves his body - a lone tear falls and splashes onto her face, and her smile fades slightly, eyes wary. “Oh, Leta,” he murmurs. “I thought you’d changed, I thought that’s what drove us apart. But it wasn’t change - I was finally forced to see who you really were.”

Her wary expression turns accusatory.

“You took me because you needed someone. And I was there, and even more, I loved you.” He deliberately wipes the tear off the image with a smudge of his thumb. “It’s because of you that I learned how to love someone, that I first felt _seen_ , and for that, I’ll always be grateful.”

She smiles at him again, this time, appeasing.

“But I think it’s about time I left your command.”

And with a certainty he hadn’t felt in the longest time - with one glaring exception - he peels the photo from the frame and sets it on his work table, exposed and flimsy and bearing the marks of a fifteen-year-old wound.

She stares up at him with a furious disbelief, utterly betrayed.

“I don’t want to only think of you with pain, Leta.”

_I don’t think anyone could stop us but our own selves._

He takes a final breath, and plucks her ghost out of his space.

“At your service, General.”

Then, with a gentle tap of his wand, her face disappears from the photo. It folds into itself briefly, then sprouts into a web of greenery, a tiny cluster of purple flowers emerging from the tangle.

Newt picks up the lilac, letting it rest on the palm of his hand. Before he can take another moment to remember, or to wonder if he regrets (he doesn’t), a rush of wind comes tumbling in through the open door and catches the flower - sends it swirling away, untraceable, into the depths of the case.

He breathes in deeply, the faintest trace of sweet floral in the air.

_She always had to leave her mark_.

As he sticks his wand back into his jacket pocket, it hits something solid. Reaching in, he pulls out the offending object, looks at it, and grins, passing it between his two palms. As quickly as it brings him to another world - _sea salt, cold hands seeking his own, a smile so wonderfully unrestrained and eyes crinkled at the corners_ \- a terrible feeling of _loss_ begins to reverberate through his bones.

Time and space were vastly overrated, he decides.

He’d wasted enough as it was.

Quickly placing the shell on the table (where the frame once stood), he bounds up the stairs two at a time to fetch a sheet of parchment and quill.

(three months really had been far too long.)

 

* * *

 

After a nearly fortnight of no response, he figures she’s given up on him.

It makes sense, he reasons solemnly. The last time he’d seen her, he’d been a pain-inflicting mess of a man - and a few letters back and forth, plus a strange invitation to his home, couldn’t have been enough to convince her otherwise.

He kneels next to Balthazar on the field. The poor creature’s wing remained bizarrely furled, but Newt was determined to get it fixed before he left for New York.

And to New York he must go, for he wouldn’t let a lack of response stop him from jumping on the next ship, crossing the ocean, and running the length of the city to find her -

He stops mid-thought, sensing a sudden presence to his left, and looks up.

(perhaps an entire ocean and city were considerably smaller than he’d thought.)

Tina stands several feet away from him - hands clasped together, something akin to a smile on her face, and wearing the same wool sweater she’d donned by the sea (looking English, indeed.)

_She looks tired_ , he observes distractedly, the usual dark circles under her eyes more prominent, lips raw and chapped, her face slightly gaunter and lined with worry.

But in all his travels and acquaintances and studies of the most fascinating creatures-

-he’d never seen anything more beautiful.

After gawking at her for an embarrassingly lengthy moment, he practically leaps towards her, disbelieving and obvious words falling out of his mouth against his will. Thankfully, she manages to interrupt his stream of clumsy chatter.

“I missed you,” she says loudly, flushing a familiar pink at her own honesty.

Rather than merely thrilling him, her muddled admission and anxious eyes settle something deep in his very being, the certainty he’d felt weeks earlier rising from the depths once more.

_And I, you,_ he replies.

And he finds it’s the most wonderfully _clear_ thing he’s ever done - to look at the inexplicable marvel of his ever-shifting world that is Tina Goldstein (perhaps not unwavering or unsinkable, but all the better for it) and prepare to tell her all of the ways in which she given to a seemingly ghost-ridden, immovable man.

All of the ways in which he is going to love her, truly and wholly.

(she has ghosts, too, he knows. and he’d be happy to share them, for many, many moments.)

“Let’s take a walk?”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, well I definitely didn’t expect this one to be even longer - I was considerably more nervous about writing this just because I feel that Newt’s voice doesn’t come as easily to me as Tina’s (although I love him dearly too), but I guess I had more of a journey for him to tell than I realized. I found their respective struggles with love to be quite different, but equally as interesting and real.
> 
> Getting to flesh out Leta a bit was also great fun - there was no way I could talk about Newt’s journey without her - and I hope I was able to take her out of the simplified "villain" or obstacle box.
> 
> Anyways, thank you so much for taking your time to read this - I appreciate it more than you know! Comments and criticisms always valued.


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